


Family Trees Have Thorns

by Belfire



Series: With Family Like This Who Needs Joker? [3]
Category: Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Cousins, Crime Lords, Gang Violence, Gun Violence, Jason doesn't listen, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, Racism, and has spent the past month eating mac an' cheese so you know its going down, and violence in general, mafia-ish family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-19 07:19:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18132653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Belfire/pseuds/Belfire
Summary: "You'll hate your cousins," dad said. "They'll hate you too." He said and Jason, of course, knew better than to take a man who knew better for his word when he dove head long into his estranged family circle. Just since it worked out for him once doesn't meant that'll always be the case and his cousins aren't too thrilled with grandma's literal snowflake.And Jason was so excited to have cousins but as it happens, the name's not the only thing that runs in the family.





	Family Trees Have Thorns

**Author's Note:**

  * For [odd_izzy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/odd_izzy/gifts).



> Dedicated to odd_izzy, who requested this ages ago, so much apology for taking forever to get it off the drawing board but here we go! Hope you like it, friend, and thanks for always leaving a great comment on every chapter of mine that you read. It might be a cheese-fest but I named one of Jason's cousins after you XD
> 
> Also, big special thanks to my partner-in-crime, Anrim, for beta-reading this for me when I was too lazy to put in the work by myself. You're an angel for reading 7. something K words<3
> 
> Jason's cousins are racist but I, by no means, am. Just making that clear.

" _Dad_?  _Hellooo?_ Earth to dad." Jason waved his hand in front of his father's face to no reaction, Willis' eyes were wide and he stared at the space between the floor and the wall, completely void of emotion. It had all been going so normally until he answered that caller and the phone now lay at his feet with a split across its screen from where it had fallen.

Humming in thought, Jason walked around him, bent slightly to meet his vacant line of sight.

" _Dad_?"

 _Nothing_. Jason wasn't even sure he was breathing anymore. He took Willis by the shoulders and gave him a light shake, still not snapping him out of this state of dissociation, not even when he tried a little harder. Jason had learned his dad had three varying personalities; pissed off, too tired to function normally, and suffering silently because of something his son had done and said son was concerned this might be a new state of being for him. He didn't know if he could handle it.

"Well,  _fuck_ ," Jason sighed and glanced around his apartment for apparently nothing but if it'd help he'd take it. It had been a perfectly normal afternoon where Willis had been over to idly visit, or so he  _claimed_ , just because he was in the neighborhood (Jason still had no idea where his father lived, he wouldn't say) but just a few moments in it was clear this drop-by was to make sure Jason was taking his pain pills. Breaking his arm on patrol didn't mean he needed those stupid drugs but his dads weren't having it.

However, he'd take Willis over Bruce, any day of the week, mostly since he could physically restrain only  _one_  of them.

And now he had broken his preferable dad. Was this to do with the shocking fact that Jason had been on a strict mac an' cheese diet this past month? Too much sodium being bad was a myth, he was sure.

"Dad, this isn't funny anymore." Frustrated, Jason let him know with another shake. "Bruce is gonna blame  _me_  for this."

When he wasn't getting anything at all, Jason put his arm around Willis' middle and picked him up like a doll, carrying him with to where he'd left his phone charging on the kitchen counter. Dad tucked beneath his arm, Jason dialled his other dad and waited impatiently while the ringing connected the lines. Except it sent him straight to voicemail and since Bruce was such a boring prude, there wasn't even a witty message before the beep. Just  _beep_.

"Yo, B, I broke dad and now he's uncharacteristically unresponsive to being my handbag. Call me back since I know you're already fuming over this thing I've done." With that, he hung up and tossed the phone back on the counter and by then, Willis had come out of it enough to be trying to pry Jason's arm from trapping him.

"Jay, put me down." He said with considerably less enthusiasm than he usually had for this topic and just for that, Jason didn't kick up resistance when he carefully set dad back on his feet.

"You gonna tell me about that?" Jason inquired with an arched brow when Willis offered no words of explanation, just stared hopelessly at nothing.

".... Your grandmother called."

"Is she okay?"

Slowly, Willis nodded, the distance in his eyes a constant that was beginning to concern Jason.

"She's completely fine. It's nothing fatal." Okay then. Jason did think it was weird that Willis would be reduced to this state by something as  _menial_  as his mother being in a bad way, given how he wasn't overly attached to the woman - which must be a Todd thing. But something was obviously weighing heavily on his heart, even if Ma was alright.

" _Dad_...?" Jason pushed, tipping his head ever so slightly when Willis appeared to space out again. Okay, this was  _really_  getting worrying. Should he call Bruce again?

".... But I need to go see her." Willis finally continued with a dread-filled swallow as if there was something vile in his mouth.

" _So_? You've seen Grandma Gunn plenty of times." Was that really the problem?  _Really_? Ma promised not to shoot him on sight last week, so what was he afraid of? He looked afraid.

"Ma wants my siblings there too."

"Those siblings you haven't seen since I was born?" Unless there were even  _more_  family members Willis never told him existed. Honestly, there were  _many_. Jason still wanted to find out who his grandfather was but learning the identity of his grandmother and that he had uncles and aunts was all he was getting for months, he could tell. Willis had a strange heart-felt need to keep the family shrouded in as much darkness as he could as if he didn't want Jason to have blood relatives. He liked his dad, he liked Ma, he was sure he'd like the others, too.

"Dad, it must be important if Grandma wants all of you there."

"It is."

"Then you gotta go."

"I can't. She wants you there too and..... your  _cousins_." Willis all but shivered at that last part there like he was a devout Catholic and it was the name of the devil that he spoke. Absolutely no part of Jason didn't go up in firework excitement when he mentioned cousins but he hid it beneath his skin with skill, making sure sparks of it didn't light up in his eyes when he said,

"Dad, I'm not afraid of no cousins." Jason assured him while his inner self trembled with the idea of finally worming around his dad's protective barrier, set up between them and the extended family. Finally, these mysteries' walls were showing their cracks.

"I know you're not, kid, but in all honesty, my nephews and nieces will  _hate_  you." ....  _Ouch_. Willis said that like every part of him meant it and Jason won't lie, that hurt the  _tiniest_  bit. He'd never met his cousins, they'd never met him, how could they hate him? Dad was just being crazy to keep up the anonymity of their bloodline. He really needed to stop that.

"You're lucky nothing gets to me, dad."

"You're  _kidding_ , right?" Willis cocked a brow with an unamused expression. "You're still sulking over me not getting you a pet rattlesnake when you were four." Not untrue but it was uncalled for, dragging up the past like that. Jason's gaze narrowed on him for a second or two before his hands lunged out and grabbed Willis, lifting him up again.

"We're going to see Ma because she asked so nicely."  _And because I wanna meet our family._

"Jason, this is a  _very_  bad idea." Willis assured him, breaking the mold by not trying to free himself from the prison of his son's arms. He accepted his captivity sooner than usual.

"That's literally the first thought that goes through my head before I do anything."

"Fine then." With an eye roll, Willis exhaled slowly. "Just make sure you're armed and don't say I didn't tell you so."

* * *

 

"Don't wander off, Jason," Willis instructed him, pulling his son back to his side by his wrist when he tried to depart to investigate the strangers dotting every corner of Ma's sizeable house. This was a terrible idea but Jason would do whatever the hell he wanted regardless if Willis tried to stop him, so the best he could do was be close enough for damage control.

"You realise you're more boring than Bruce, right? That's like... an  _astronomical_  level of boring."

Willis ignored him the way only a parent could, stepping around a doorframe to his mother's office, already holding a gathering of five or so people, including the OG crimelord of their family; Ma Gunn. She sat behind a large wooden desk that had been on this earth almost as long as she had, reading directly from stereotypes as she counted thick wads of Benjamins, all stacked neatly in one corner. She looked up when they entered, half-moon glasses and seventy-something years of age aside, her cold grey eyes were startling in their intensity, holding captive anyone they locked on until she decided otherwise.

"You're late." She curtly remarked in place of any greeting.

"Not as late as I wanted to be." Willis truthfully replied, quite aware that each and every one of his siblings - Mateo, Christian, Mariana, Selene, all the others - were glaring knives as usual, though not at him. They were looking at Jason and since they'd never seen him before, they had their questions. The one sister who had met Jason when he was a baby, AKA Willis' only ally among his family, wasn't here for the good reason that she'd cut all connections from their mafia background, hence why her daughter grew up normal and not some gunslinging maniac.

"He's my son, Mateo." Willis let his older brother know when his leer became criminal, hand reaching for the gun at his belt in the telltale way he acted when he thought he sensed a threat. He should, this was Red Hood... but they didn't know that.

"How come we've never seen him before?" Mariana asked, leaning from one leg to the other to balance the weight of the toddler she was bouncing on her hip. Willis didn't even know there'd been an addition to the family but his siblings were like rabbits without the good sense to stop at one, so this was hardly surprising.

"How come I've never seen that one before?" He gestured to the child who was sucking on his own fist, staring with wide-eyes at the adults who were all more or less deeply involved in crime. Mateo used to be high-up in Black Mask's order, before the fall of that shitshow that left him with a bone to pick with Red Hood. Mariana was the wife of Bludhaven's motorcycle gang's leader, Christian ran a drug ring, Selene, a brothel and other things like that. You can see why his drug-dealing, number-running, thief self wasn't held within the highest esteems here.

"Maybe cause you never show-up to these family get-togethers."

"Maybe cause we  _never_  have family get-togethers unless someone's dead."

"Uncharacteristically correct, Willis," Ma interrupted them and her money counting, the warning tone of her voice enough to shut all her kids up. Also uncharacteristic, she  _smiled_... but that was only when she saw Jason and he came over to hug her.

"Hiya, grandma. Missed ya." Jason told her and Willis hoped to god he was lying. He didn't look like it, though, not since he smiled when he stepped back from the embrace Ma didn't try to hit him for, which she would have done if it were any other grandchild.

"Good to see you again, Jason - my, what happened to your arm?"

Glancing at the painfully white cast circling his forearm then back to her, Jason shrugged nonchalantly.

"I took a rebar to the radius. Nothin' to worry about."

"Hmm. Well, be more careful on the playground." Ma teased him with a grin that made Willis and his siblings alike extremely uncomfortable for its unnerving nature. It's like seeing an extraterrestrial for the first time; you freak out.

"Will do, gran'ma." Jason agreed with a smile and a nod. "Now who's dead?"

"Your grandfather," Ma stated matter-of-factly, completely void of the normal emotions a person felt when the father of some of her children turned up dead. It was a matter of time, really, given how he thought it was a good idea to hustle crime lords.

"Oh - shit. I - I'm sorry, Ma." Jason said.

"Don't be. He was a waste of oxygen."

"How'd he die?" Willis asked, as uninvested in the death as his mother was. Disinterested for the most part, he ran his tongue along the edges of his teeth, impartial to whether or not he got the details as to how his, Mateo's, and Selene's father met his very timely demise.

"I killed him. He was skimming money so I put a shotgun in his mouth." Ma didn't hold back even a little bit, no hesitation at all and Willis shrugged his shoulders while Mateo and Selene made some passing comment about a bet they'd had as to how the man would die. Jason, however, was clearly a little shocked grandma killed grandpa. Welcome to the fucking family.

"So, why are we here then, mother? It can't be to make funeral arrangements."

"Oh, I already had the corpse thrown over Gotham bridge so don't worry about that." Ma casually let them know, holding a thick stack of hundreds while she tapped the edge against the table top to make them all nice and neat.

"Well, I didn't call you here on account of your father's death, I just thought you should know about it." Sure, cause none of them had seen the guy for forty or so years, they were shedding tears like waterfalls.

"As you know, Batman put my school out of operation once-"

"Sorry about that, grandma." Jason awkwardly mumbled since if Willis recalled correctly, his boy was the only reason that ever happened. That was something to truly be proud of.

"It's fine, Jason." Ma dismissed him with a wave of her hand, continuing on like he wasn't there,

"And Black Mask crippled it the second time around. So, in the face of these circumstances, I've made the decision that we need to combine our firepower and that of rival gangs - by force, if we must."

"Fuck no!" Mateo snapped at once without seeing the logic behind Ma's scheme. The reason she wasn't a second or an underling was since if there was one thing she knew, it was crime.

"We're not combining  _anything_ just to make you more powerful,madre."

"Mateo, dear, you were dethroned when my heart and soul, _Red Hood_ here," Ma motioned to Jason, to  _whom_  everyone's attention snapped to and Willis exhaled slowly, pinching the bridge of his nose. Great...

"..... Kicked your ass down from Sionis' concrete castle, so don't worry about me taking anything from you. Trust me, you've got nothing of interest to me."

"You're fucking Red Hood, you upstart  _bitch_?" Mateo snapped, fist already raised to smash into Jason, something Jason could block without a thought but the cock of Ma's shotgun was there before he needed to.

"Mateo, think very hard on Jason being valuable to me and you  _not_." Her warning, harsh as it was, was heeded with a glower when Mateo wisely returned to his original spot. At least, Willis didn't have to worry about Jason getting roughed up by his uncles and aunts, they wouldn't dare to now that they knew he was in Ma's favour.

That was about the only safe zone this damned family had.

Placing her shotgun on the table top where they could see it as a reminder that she had it and would turn to it if it served her best, Ma went on,

"Willis, Selene, honeys, I'm aware the two of you don't have gangs but stay for the briefing. You need to be clued in on how we're going to be handling things."

So Ma really intended to completely ignore that Willis had nothing to do with her criminal empire and thus had zero to contribute? He'd bet money on her expecting him to report back to Wayne and that somehow being part of her latest master plan but newsflash, he wasn't Batman's little spy. The only reason he was staying at all is that Jason sneaked off a second ago. If the kid wanted to so adamantly to be part of this crime family,  he,  _unfortunately_ , needed to learn its perils.

Willis gave it three minutes before hell broke loose. Five,  _max_.

* * *

 

Ignoring his dad's each and every warning was Jason's go-to plan. Sure, it was Willis' family but that made it  _Jason's_  also. He could do  _whatever_  he fucking wanted and quite honestly, if he hadn't already let on, the prospect of relatives his own age excited him. He'd always wanted siblings and this was the closest thing. And no, Dick, Damian, and Tim didn't matter on account of them all being annoying shits.

After all, Jason was pretty sure Dick was traumatized from the last time he swung by Ma's to look for him. Unfortunately for him, dear old grandma was apparently somewhat of a player and set her cougar eyes on Dick. Poor guy, she said some of the filthiest things Jason had ever heard to Dick and when she wasn't mentally undressing him, she was getting way too handsy. To Jason, it was  _hilarious_  to have his grandma shamelessly hitting on his brother but apparently it wasn't appropriate or something like that. Bruce said so when Dick spent the night crying in his arms.

Jason's adoptive siblings weren't allowed near Ma Gunn again.... but it was funny, though.

The corner into the living room was one he'd taken many times but now, all of a sudden, Jason was surrounded by a mob of people he presumed were the cousins he'd never met or known of.

Carefully, he looked around at their scowling faces, some pulling an expression of distaste and others inquisitive as to him, but all were scowling like he was the foulest thing they'd ever seen. They were all so burly or stick thin. There was no in between. The big cousins were  _very_  big, just hunks of bulging muscles spilling out their tank tops and ripped jeans, absolutely no definition at all. Just muscle and muscle and muscle.

And then at the opposite end of the scale, there were the anorexic looking ones that didn't appear to have an ounce of fat anywhere on their bodies. Their skin was discoloured and they could be mistaken for fifty-somethings, all telltale signs of the addiction that the family was prone to.

But not only were there those differences, but they were all so...  _dark_. Their skin tones varied from olive to tan to straight-up brown, while he was Snow White-fair in comparison. Jason had never been bothered or properly aware that he was considerably paler than his dad, but now it hit like a freight train and he pulled his sleeves over his hands self-consciously. His mother was a blonde porcelain All-American girl and it appeared Willis was the only one of his siblings who had interracial children. Several sets of eyes, brown and dark shades of grey, bore into him, none matching the clear teal leaning into blue with flecks of green that was the colour of Jason's irises. Another thing that set him apart, although  _that_  he'd inherited from Willis, but Jason did doubt all his uncles and aunts and dad had the same father.

" _The fuck_ are you?" Among the biggest of the bunch, the cousin someone had called Diego earlier spat at Jason, sizing him down from his foot of vantage height.

Jason didn't know if he should reply to that, and he didn't need to fret about it when scantily clad cousin Isabella beat him to it.

"Winter's come early, amigos, snowflakes all over the fucking place." Leering at Jason, Isabella tossed her oodles of thick curled hair over her bare shoulder, her spaghetti strap crop-top leaving little for the imagination. Her arms were covered in bangles that jingled together every time she moved so much as an inch.

"Why the fuck did abuela let this made-in-the-shade albino bitch into the house?" Diego really made sure that Jason understood they were different races with that and then, Felipe chimed in. Felipe was among the skinny druggie-types but that didn't stop him from dragging Jason through the dirt.

"El es su favorito. He's her favourite.  _Dios_  mio," He ran his hand through his fading hair that was nothing more than thickly gelled back strands. "Shoulda known the uncle we don't speak about would have this  _thing_  for a kid." He gestured to Jason pointedly, accusationally, like he'd done something terrible to them.

 _Seriously_?

" _Wow_. This race thing is really an issue for you pricks, isn't it?" Jason's gaze travelled between them, regaining his voice after the initial shock of cold water of what they were like.

" _Increible-_! The  _it_  can talk." Isabella adopted a mock note to her thick accent, another thing that they all had but Jason didn't. But then, Willis didn't sound Hispanic either. He spoke like a fucking native to Brooklyn with only the occasional trace of a too-enunciated letter where the emphasis shouldn't be. Jason wondered if his dad had dealt with similar situations with his siblings.

"Your billionaire daddy teach ya words too, blanco?" Diego sneered, leaning down a little and Jason resisted that he was close enough to break his nose with the fist already balling at his side.  _Forgive them Lord for they know not who they're fucking with._  Jason could send them  _all_  to a cemetery yet he had to restrain himself.

"You bitter 'cause I wasn't raised in a brothel, bitch?" Biting back the worst of his insults for that simple one, Jason's teeth were set like a vice, glaring daggers up into his bigger cousin's stupid chocolatey eyes. He was somewhere near Jason's age but didn't look the part. He looked like an uncle and not a cousin, clearly having hit the gym one too many times until steroids first came to mind when thinking of him.

"From what I hear," Twice as crazy as the boys, Isabella cut in with her annoying self, "you didn't need a whorehouse, Jaycin."

"It's  _Jason_ ,  _Izzy_.  _S-O-N_  not C-I-N." He snapped, ignoring the majority of her comment to focus on that one part that pissed him off the most. Mispronouncing his name like that wasn't even a side-effect of her accent, it was just her being a nit-picky bitch doing her god-all to wedge herself under his  _white_  skin.

"Whatever,  _snowflake_." Rolling her eyes, she spat and didn't see Jason's struggle to withhold each and every one of the racist slurs he spent his sophomore year perfecting sheerly because that dumb 'don't stoop to their level' shit that Bruce ground into his brain was shrieking at him.

A muscle in Jason's jaw twitched his irritability, cold glare not capable of chilling the bubbling rage in his chest. Sixteen cousins, at least, surrounding him like a gang and he was planning how he would take them all down, restraint slipping through his willing fingers.

"The fuck's this? A losing streak?" Isabella - Jason's most hated cousin so far - reached out to him and took a handful of the snowy hair that normally went without much notice, and she gave it a feral tug to a wince from Jason, then a snarl as he slapped her hand viciously away.

" _Watch_  it, you-"

"Don't fucking hit my sister, snowflake!" The switch to Diego's anger was an easy to flip one, true to his bloodline, and he tried to break Jason's face with an ill-thought-out punch that's angle made it all too easy to kick the wind out his lungs. The cousins were shocked beyond their wits when the biggest of them stumbled almost off his feet by Jason's hand - or boot - and by the time their aggressive scowls snapped back to him, Jason had cocked his berettas with five targets already in mind.

"Cue Santana and tell me who  _the fuck_  wants to die first?" His teeth were bared like an attack dog's when he'd been willing to let them live before, but they took the first strike, an open invitation in his books. Seeing the firearms in his fists, it wasn't a second before the room filled with the clatter of metal and clicks of hammers being pulled back when a whole army's worth of guns locked on him. Even Izzy had an AK-47 on her, appearing outta nowhere. Her eyes narrowed on him, as did his on her.

None of his cousins were leaving this room alive.

* * *

 

Having a perfectly normal passive-aggressive and partially threatening conversation with his brothers and six sisters while Ma went somewhere briefly, Willis almost leaped out his skin when an eardrum-shattering bang erupted from the next room. The room where they'd left the  _kids_. A cacophony of shots careered through the air, bullets shattering windows and coming through the drywall with explosions of dust. A chunk of lead almost went through Willis' neck, missing by an inch that left his heart pounding a little too loud.

"Those fucking  _brats_!" Mateo immediately knew the culprits, of who there was never a shred of doubt, and stormed out with his fists in trembling balls. He was Diego's and Isabella's father, their bad temper inherited from him and Willis and his sisters alike knew the shockwave would be terrible.

"It's that Jason of yours causing the problem," Mariana muttered to him when she roughly shouldered past him and he followed, mumbling a tired agreement. It was definitely Jason who started this and unless they pulled him and the cousins apart fast, he'd end it too.

In good confidence, Willis had once made the assumption that he'd seen everything and sadly, he'd really thought that too, that is until he walked in on his son, nephews, and nieces in the midst of a gang riot. Someone - probably the hawk-eyed Francesca - had lassoed Jason's unbroken left arm and with the rope under some major strain, Diego had it looped over the previously intact chandelier with Jason hoisted meters off the ground, shooting and kicking at everything that moved. Isabella, the worst of the bunch and the most like Jason, had a broken-off table leg in her fist and with it, sent the only remaining gun spinning from Jason's hand and across the room, giving him a hearty whack to go along with it.

Jason stifled a noise of pain with his teeth clamped bruisingly on his lip and against his cousins trying to kill him, pulled himself up the rope, onto the chandelier, where he cut the thin chain barely supporting his weight with a blood-soaked buck knife from his boot.

 _SMASH-_!

Items shattered, blood sprayed, those caught under the hundred pounds of glass and metal screamed and Jason lunged at the nearest cousin, smashing his collarbone with a knee aimed just right, then proceeded to stab someone through the arm and pin them to the wall with the knife he never let go of.

Willis and his siblings were, for once, all stunned, no one knowing what the fuck to make of the massacre unfolding before them. Even the always vocal,  _always_  violent Mateo stayed gobsmacked and wide-eyed, jaw actually fallen open. It was only when Isabella marched past him with a shotgun and rage-filled intent that Willis snapped out of the trance enough to grab it from her.

"Papi, the snowflake is loco!" Isabella turned to her father at once, already knowing anything she said to her uncle wouldn't make him endorse his son's murder.

"He  _hit_  me, papi." She went on, appealing to the side of her dad whose princess she was and sure enough, it worked, Mateo was furious that his baby girl was injured, no matter she almost certainly instigated Jason.

"Grab a gun and we'll kill him together, princesa." Mateo growled, eyes glazed over with fury and roughly, he snatched the weapon from Willis before Willis could do a thing to stop him. He cocked it, got Jason in his sights, was about to yank the trigger back when the firearm went flying from his hand with a bang and sparks bursting in all directions. And then everyone's gun was shot from their grasp and Willis hadn't ever been happy to see his mother until then. Inwardly, he sighed with relief that she was there by the door with the familiar icy cold leer and shotgun trained on them.

"Hurt the favourite grandchild and all of you dirty mongrels are dead." Darkly, Ma warned them, all but growling and her grandchildren knew to take every letter of the threat seriously. Teeth bared like a pack of wolves, begrudgingly they backed away from Jason and Diego released the headlock he had him in, ready to break his neck. Jason hissed at him when he retreated, snapping his jaws as if he were an animal and Willis didn't know how Ma couldn't see that Jason was no better than his cousins.

"Why the fuck is  _he_  your favourite, abuela?" Isabella demanded with an angry hand motion to Jason and mature as he was, Jason flipped her off. And like always, Ma ignored everything negative or instigative that Jason did.

"Because he's the sole descendent I have who  _isn't_  a heartbreaking disappointment and furthermore, Jason is fit to take over the family business when the shame of you lot  _finally_  kills me. " The cousins and uncles and aunts alike, none of them were happy at that when for years now, it had been a gamble between them who inherited Ma's reins. And now it was made known it was the rich white outsider no one had met until today. On a later date or any other situation, Willis would have argued with her over that. There was no reason for Jason to add her criminal empire to the quarter of Gotham he already ruled over and honestly, the prospect of her territory combined with his  _and_  Red Hood as its ruler was terrifying.

Willis made a plan to discuss it with Wayne and together somehow, they'd make sure that never happened.  _God_ , he loved having someone who shared in parenting Jason and would back him up on these matters.

Picking up his guns, clips emptied, Jason gave his cousins several not-fit-to-be-mentioned hand gestures as head tipped up with self-importance, he walked across the blood covered ground somehow  _not_  scattered with casualties. Isabella's fists tightened, her jaw ground, and the look in her black eyes was murder in its most premeditated manifestation.

After this fiasco, Willis couldn't believe no one was dead.

He followed his son out, mumbling peace-keeping apologies to his siblings and nephews and nieces  _and_  mother while he did, apologies he only meant half-heartedly since Jason was not the sole offender here but of course, they shouldn't be anticipating any olive branches from the other party.

"Why didn't you tell me I'd hate them?" Jason demanded and Willis rolled his eyes in silence, it's not like he said  _anything_  of a similar nature even once.

* * *

 

That night, Jason was in the worst mood of his.... week. He left the company of his dad before Willis could let that silent 'I told you so' look linger on him any longer than it had and he occupied himself by patrolling his quarter of Gotham City. He was careful to hide the shining white cast with his sleeve and glove, also a few passing prayers that included crooks not noticing Red Hood couldn't bend his wrist.

He had other things on his mind, though. Like, how much he hated his family, for example, and the sole reason they hated him? Well, Jason didn't quite catch it. Was it because he was Caucasian, raised by a billionaire or that he was Ma's shameless favourite? Actually, it might be all of those things but instead of feeling bad about it, he'd relish in the fact that his cousins were less than the dirt beneath his boots.

Cause that made it all better.

Jason was just finishing up with a troop of Riddler's finest assholes trying to steal away a piece of his territory when he heard footsteps at the mouth of the alleyway, approaching him. The newcomers caught his attention at once, but not because they were all wielding weapons.

"Capucha Roja, what a surprise." Diego sneered, testing the weight of a spiked baseball bat on his gloved palm. With him was Isabella, Felipe, Francesca and one other cousin whose name Jason didn't remember, but his 6'2 stature, muscles with muscles and sawed-off more than made up for his unknown identity. How the fuck did they find him?

"What are you bitches doing here?" Jason demanded, his eyes narrowing behind his helmet while he stepped over the bodies of the fifteen men he just floored without breaking a sweat. He changed the clip in his Beretta just in case he needed to add another five people to that pile.

"We have some unfinished business, Jaycin," Izzy stated, one hand on her hip while she casually spun a chain singing through the air in an axis.

"And Abuela isn't here to protect you now."

"You really think I need an old woman with a shotgun to protect my ass?" With a jerk of his hand, Jason motioned to the fallen crooks lining the alley ground, all groaning or wishing for death. But apparently, that wasn't an indicator as to his capability to hold his own ground.

"Oh, please, we all know the reason people don't go for the Red Hood is that he's Ma Gunn's make-a-wish kid."

Upper lip curling up to bare the teeth they couldn't see, Jason dropped his gun to his feet and replaced it with the knife coming off his holster fast. These...  _cousins_  had earned themselves an up-close-in-personal beat down and a fight is clearly what they came for. Seeing that he'd indulge them, grins and smirks took up residence on their faces when they approached him, splitting up to close him in a circle.

Maybe they really were family since gearing up for battle was certainly something Jason usually practiced.

But they were still getting the hell beat out of them.

Diego lunged at him first, swinging the studded bat at him only to miss by an entire meter when Jason leaped out of his reach and gave him a boot to the face to think about. Next, Felipe tried his luck but met one of the many uses a vigilante had for a rock-solid cast such as the one Jason smacked upside the head with and sent him into a wall. Now, Francesca and Isabella, they proved they were smarter than the boys when they went for Jason at the same time, both coming up from his sides so fast they gave him two choices; get his legs swept out from beneath him with a chain or take a sledgehammer but he made his own third alternative and decided to narrowly dodge both of those.

Jason was fully confident he could whip his moronic cousins all the way back to whatever slum they crawled from except the bullet that suddenly came careering into his chest plate with a deafening clap would beg to differ. It didn't go through but succeeded in knocking him on his ass, winded with his newly bruised ribs screeching in pain he needed to ignore if he was going to get back up before they got the better of his predicament.

Wheezing, Jason scrambled to pull his shaking arms beneath himself and rise but to his confusion, his cousins weren't raising weapons to pound him into the dirt with now that they had the opportunity. No, they'd stopped attacking him to all stare at the Riddler-goon with the literal smoking gun extended. Jason must've not knocked those guys out as efficiently as usual since they were getting off the floor and taking up arms again.

Oh fuck. With the breath kicked out his lungs and his arm broken, Jason was in trouble now that he had both parties to fight at once.

"... Did you just  _shoot_  my  _cousin_ , esé?" Diego started slowly as if he couldn't believe what he just saw and Isabella joined in on the indignity.

"Didn't your mommies ever teach you not to interrupt family matters?" She swung her waist-length hair over her shoulder, swaying the chain wrapped around her fist in a threatening slow motion before it began spinning again.

"We - we're all enemies of the Hood here." The man with the gun, his voice trembled when he sensed the dangerous shift in the air. Jason sensed it too but didn't understand what it meant or why his eyes were lying to him by making it look like his cousins were  _actually_  sticking up for him.

"We can kill him together."

"Or.... we kill  _you_  for fucking with family." Diego was a strong boy, stronger than Jason so he made it look easy when his bat came down without warning on the gunman's head, breaking his skull like a melon bursting out on all sides.

Jason couldn't imagine anyone but his relatives possessing such a natural raw streak of violence when they tore into Riddler's goons with no regard for the no-kill rule that... he supposed,  _didn't_  apply to them.  _Lucky bastards_.... who were helping him for some reason.  _Why_?

"On your feet, Jason," Francesca ordered him, extending her hand and without showing his confusion, he took it. She yanked him up with surprising strength and while he recovered his balance, her hand darted to his holster lightning fast, yanked his gun out and took three shots over his shoulder, each bullet without fault sinking deftly into the skull of an idiot charging them.

"Um, nice shot....  _sss_." More speechless than he'd like to be, Jason realised a second later than her what was happening. He blamed the hit to the chest he took for his sluggish instincts.

"Thanks, cuz." With a nod, Francesca slapped the gun back into his hand, took one of her own from god knows where and she didn't miss  _once_ when taking on the people who sought to bring harm on her family. There were bangs and screams then whacks and more screams which lead to a faster take down than Jason could have accomplished by himself.

The Riddler's men laid dead behind them when the cousins returned without so much as a bead of sweat breaking the skin or a worse injury than a bruise.

"You hurt, snowflake?" Diego asked while he spat a jelly glob of blood out the side of his mouth and Isabella wound her signature chain back into a coil that clipped onto her belt.

"Uh... no. Not really." Puzzled, Jason's gaze swept over them in search of the people who came here to fight him. No one raised a fist to him this time around.

"Why did you do that?"

"Um, you're our  _cousin_?" Izzy suggested with a tone that said he should have known that.

"You tried to kill me."

"Not  _really_." She scoffed. "We might find your ass annoying and  _white_  but we ain't here to kill ya, you're  _family_." She motioned to Felipe and Francesca and that other guy who remained nameless.

"We fight like this all the time but they're my ride-or-die bitches."

"And besides," Diego hit him playfully in the arm he tried to break earlier....  _twice_. "You hold your ground pretty good, for a rich white boy, that is. If you can kick ass, you're one of us."

Jason tipped his head, considering that statement. It made  _perfect_  sense to him, but that might be to do with the dominant thought process he'd noticed ran strong in their family.

"Does that mean we're cool?"

"For now," Diego confirmed with a nod.

"Alright then." A slow grin crept up Jason's features, a grin that anyone who knew him would recognise as a warning for when he was scheming. Something had been dawning on him from the moment he saw their ability in a fight and he just might....

"I have a proposition for you people if you'd be willing to hear me out? Abuela gave me an idea earlier...."

* * *

 

"Jason, you're sure you're alright? Your cousins were pretty brutal on you the other day."

"I'm fine, dad," Jason assured him for the tenth time while mentally slamming the door in his face to make him leave him alone already. He watched his dad from the narrow space he parted the door, keeping him trapped in the hall outside in the hopes he'd realise he really wasn't wanted here right now.

Jason was  _busy_.

"You've got a new bruise on your eye." Willis observed, deliberately not taking the hint he caught. Yeah and that bruise was from where Isabella tried to cave his skull in. All water under the bridge.

"I've also got a shit tonne to do."

".... Do I need to tell Wayne you're up to something?" Dad slowly raised a brow.  _Drat_ , he knew Jason too well but despite being onto him, he needed to play it cool or risk drawing more attention to himself.

"Actually, dad...." Jason sighed. "I was entertaining some  _friends_. You know my pals Kori and Roy? They wanted to spice up their sex lives and knew I was the guy to come to. I got two horny naked redheads in my bedroom so you can tell Bruce if you want but I'm gonna be-"

" _Okay_ , Jason." Willis held up a hand to stop him as if he was suddenly disinterested in his son's business. "I get it. I'll leave you alone."

" _Thank you_." Jason gave him a courteous nod that hid his victory grin.

"Enjoy your... um, your three-way." Awkward the way Jason enjoyed making him, his dad turned to go nice and fast while Jason subtly pulled the door to without a sound. He made sure Willis was actually gone before he came back into the living room where a map of Gotham was spread out over the coffee table and surrounded by Isabella, Diego, Felipe, and Francesca... and also that nameless guy who was apparently Tomas. They were waiting on him to return before anything continued.

"Got rid of him." Jason let them know and resumed his place between Isabella and Felipe, pressing his finger down on the spot of the map that marked the end of Red Hood's territory and the start of Penguin's.

"Oz is the current weakest link, we take him out and we double our turf by a half."

"You'd be declaring a gang-war, Jason." Isabella pointed out as if that hadn't occurred to him even once. No, Jason knew what he was doing and regardless of the risks, his cousins were all in. He'd figured they wanted to start something of their own and not be roped into whatever mafia their parents were part of. And Jason had been craving a bigger chunk of Gotham for a while now so this was  _perfecto_  for him. He couldn't manage all that territory himself but with the help of his cousins... and it was family bonding. Oh, Bruce was gonna  _flip_!

"I know but we can beat the shit out of a bunch of penguins with guns." While he spoke, he drew a line to Two-Face's nook of the city.

"Next, we take Dent. He's a bitch, he'll be an easy win."

"Abuela will either kill you for stealing her master plan or be proud that you did."

"I like to think both." Jason straightened and he did approve of the way they were anticipating the action phase of this scheme he'd concocted right after he heard their grandma planning something very similar into motion. Too bad he got it off the drawing board faster.

"And besides, whether or not Ma likes it, Gotham  _needs_  it's Red Hood gang again and who better than Red Hood and his lovely cousins?" 

**Author's Note:**

> "Oh hello! I'm the long-lost cousin you've never met, who's the adopted son of a billionaire, had a very public death and is the feared anti-hero raining terror on Gotham - wanna start a gang with me?" Sigh. That's our boy. 
> 
> BTW, did anyone catch my Solitary reference with Willis' three varying personalities? No?.... Okay. *bows head with sad pout*


End file.
